Thanks Andrew,
I figured as much on the bitwig side of things, but I think there's possibly some prevention that could be added to Alfred to ensure that I can still use my system after bitwig doesn't start (yep Alfred is that indispensable that I can't picture myself without it )
From an Alfred perspective, it seems odd that it would lock up due to a poorly performing external app. Perhaps spawning a new thread / process to perform the actual execution would solve this issue. Comparatively spotlight continues to work in this instance